JOB INTERVIEWS, SNAKE-HANDLERS AND ADVERTISING

As the Arizona winter moves into spring and grass and trees surround us, I can't help but focus on the color green--mainly because I don't have any.

Money, that is.

I finally decided, after years of self-employment, that I'd better get my butt back into the mainstream before bank officials showed up at the door with howitzers in hand and a song in their hearts.

Now, I've been out of the job interview scene--that uplifting, make you glad you're a human being scene--for quite a while.  Having worked the past few hundred years as a freelance writer, I had completely forgotten what it was like. 

Well, let me amend that.

 Not only had I forgotten what it was like, but it  had changed and gotten worse while my back was turned.

By the time my first foray into this wonderland was over, I was fully prepared to fling myself into the nearest wood chipper.  The advertised job was for a copywriter at a local advertising agency (read that: "equine manure pit").  With a score of years writing ad copy freelance, I was reasonably confident about my chances and strolled into the office at the appointed hour with a gentle smile plastered across my mug.

Then, I got my first clue.

The receptionist had neon pink hair, a live python draped around her shoulders, and a tattoo of either Satan or Tony Danza that spread across her entire face!  She was also puffing so hard on a stogie that area Indian tribes had responded to the smoke by leaving the casinos and assembling in the agency lobby.

"Whatcha need, hon?" she inquired professionally, holding aloft a live rat, presumably for her snake, but at that point, I was unprepared to make such assumptions.  A coffee break is a coffee break, I guess, and who am I to judge?

"Uh, I have a ten o'clock with Mr. Remson."

"'Kay."  She punched a few numbers on her console, then leaned back and grinned at me, revealing a mouth full of dentition that had been filed down to lethal points.  I considered running; but then remembered reading somewhere that if you show fear, they attack, so I stayed put.

"Ah, you must be Carson," observed a tall person type as he stepped out of the inner sanctum.  "I'm Bill Remson, the Creative Director."

Oh, he was creative, all right.  He had on a suit that Spike Jones would have given a cocktail or two for, facial hair that ZZ Top would have given their shades for, and a three-foot earring that I didn't give a hoot for.

"Walk this way."

Resisting the urge to perpetuate that old joke just one more time, I followed him to his office.

Boys and girls, I want to tell you that creativity has really taken a nasty turn since I was last in the old nine-to-five.  This "Director's" office was festooned with the following:

          A silver service for eight

          A service revolver

          A poster of Wally Cox

          One fuzzy die

          A plastic turkey

 

          Four blonde wigs

        

          A disconnected toilet

 

          Six stuffed and mounted gerbils doing the Can-Can

          Fifty-two copies of Erich Fromme's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

          And a partridge in a pear tree…really.

"Wow," I remarked, surveying the premises.  "You must be in the middle of some campaign!"

"No, actually we're rather slow at the moment."

I sat down in an oversize pair of red lips which I hoped and prayed was actually a chair, and unzipped my portfolio.

"A portmanteau!  How very quaint," he exclaimed.

Oh, God.

For the next twenty minutes, I displayed my award-winning work, which he flipped through quickly, looking only at the pictures therein.  This is a phenomenon I can never understand and more conventional people that this Hottentot do it.  They're interviewing a writer, but don't read one word the writer has written.

It was the only normal thing he did for the entire interview.

"Hmmm.  Seems as though you've been unemployed for quite some time," he mused.

"No, I've been self-employed."

"Same difference," he concluded, waving a dismissive hand.  "Now, let's see, you're…um…(he referred to my application)…what?  48?  Hmmmm.  I'm 50.  Hmmmm," he said, appraising me with a gimlet eye.  "Okay!  You're hired!"

"What?"

"But lose the business suit!  I bet you'd look great in really tight jeans, underwear optional."

By now the interview had morphed into a Salvatore Dali painting.

As I ran past the Dawn of the Dead snake handler at the front desk, I decided that there were worse things than not having any money.

Much worse.

Interviews, for instance. 

I have another one this Friday.

 

INTERVIEW FROM HELL

Let’s set the scene:

I’m on my way to a job interview, and the closer I get, the blacker the sky becomes.  The wind velocity picks up, shrieking around my car and jostling it back and forth like a child looking for a Cracker Jack prize.  Lightning strikes, just missing my right front fender.

Then again, I could just be projecting.

It is, in fact, a beautiful day out.

But the dark cloud follows me into . . . the job interview.

To avoid lawsuits, I will simply refer to the business as “medical.”

So, in I trudge.  God, I hate job interviews—they are a nightmare come true and I always expect to see Freddy Krueger peeking out from behind a doorway, grinning and flexing his finger knives at me.

I meet the HR person.  He is short, stinks of cheap cologne, and looks exactly like Alfred E. Neuman, right down to the missing front tooth.  He has a piece of egg on his tie. He shakes my hand with two of his own, making laser-like eye contact, then says, “What a beautiful blouse that is,” followed by a blinding smile.

Oh, God.  A Dale Carnegie graduate.  This is really going to be a sleigh ride through hell.  Beware the compliment—it is almost always followed by something negative, unless, as an opening gambit, it is an attempt at warmth.

I sit down, and he pulls his chair out from behind his desk to sit next to me—can’t have a desk in the way—this is negative.

“So, Carson, tell me about yourself, Carson.”  They love to overuse your name, thinking that it makes them appear sincerely interested, when, in reality, they don’t give a crap.

I detest this sort of open-ended question.  “What do you want to know?”

“Carson, what’s your favorite color?”

 “I beg your pardon?”

“What’s your favorite color, Carson?  Let’s start with that.”

“Uh, okay.  Green.”

His face darkens around his eye contact.  “Green, Carson?”

“Yes.”  I had given my first incorrect answer, evidently.

Another blinding smile, as he remembered his training. “How interesting, Carson! All right, Carson, let’s move on.  Carson, do you have any hobbies?”

That did it.  I didn’t want to work there anymore.  “Yes, I have many hobbies, but my favorite is collecting shrunken heads and growing carnivorous plants . . . large carnivorous plants.”

“How interesting, Carson.”  That blinding smile was beginning to fray around the edges.  “So you’re a gardener and are interested in other cultures, Carson.  Carson, that’s just great.  Oh, and I meant to tell you, Carson, those shoes are really nice.” 

Compliments are given even when the negativity is internalized.

“Thank you.  I made them myself from the skin of a Harp Seal that I personally clubbed to death.  Did you know that carnivorous plants are just crazy about seal meat?”

Looking a little green himself, probably dizzy from all the spinning he was doing, he said, “So you’re interested in nature and the great outdoors, Carson!  Fine!”  Blinding, quivering smile.  “Carson, what would you say your greatest strength is, Carson?”

“I can lift 50 pounds.”

“And your greatest weakness, Carson?”

“I can’t lift 51 pounds.”

“Hmmmm.  Carson, I really like your skirt—nice color.  I think you may, perhaps, Carson, be misinterpreting some questions, here, Carson Carson Carson.  What do you think, Carson?”  Eye contact.

I returned eye contact and sat in stony silence.

He became uneasy after a moment or two of that, and finally asked the big question:

“Carson, O Carson, Carson, Carson, Carson, why do you want to work here, Carson, Carson?”

I paused for a moment, then said, “You know, that’s a really nice jacket you’re wearing…”